RUSKIN BOND’S THE ROOM ON THE ROOF AS

AN ALLEGORY OF LIFE
V. Iyappan
PhD Research Scholar
&
Dr.Gnanaprakasam V.
Dept. of English
Annamalai University, Annamalai

The Room on the Roof recreates the aura of post-independence Dehra Dun with

seemingly just a few deft, vivid strokes of a brush. Life and Dehra had seen through the eyes of

Rusty and his experiences. It does not matter much that other characters, barring perhaps Meena

and her son Kishen, do not get enough elbowroom develop. The main object of the book is to

convey the truth that life continues regardless of death, change and individual emotional trauma,

and to invoke the magical charm of a hill station like Dehra. Life is really the quintessence of

The Room on the Roof. Rusty, who was brought up by his Anglo-Indian guardian in the posh

westernized area of Dehra, finds the antiseptic confines of his house and neighborhood quite

dull and too constricting. He harbors secret desires to explore the seedier parts of the town,

which have been declared out of bounds for him by his guardian Mr. Harrison. Eventually he

does venture into the forbidden bazaar and strikes up acquaintances with some of the local boys.

When Harrison comes to know of this Rusty has given second caning, which is Harrison‟s

standard method of punishment. On the second such occasion, Rusty rebels and runs away. The

Dehra bazaar gains satellite as the cloistered Anglo-Indian Rusty discovers the sights, smells,

sound and even tastes of the real Indian to be irresistible.

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Primary among these lures is, for Rusty, the chaat shop in the bazaar. Taken there by his

newly found friends, he becomes a gol-guppa addict in a matter of minutes. Early in the novel,

Rusty has introduced to Holi, the Hindu festivel that celebrates joie de vivre, and he is

overwhelmed. Not been accustomed to such sheer warmth and exuberance in his own circle,

Rusty immediately becomes a convert to the daily cycle of life in the bazaar, bathing at the same

street taps as his friends, eating the same chaat shop, and watching the same world go by. His

first night in the Dehra bazaar is also a novel experience. The empty lifeless street was very

deceptive; if the roofs could have been removed from but a handful of buildings, it would be

seen that life had not really stopped but, beautiful and ugly, persisted through the night.

The night is cold and wet, yet full of it is own distinctive life, including strange women

beckoning at dark windows. Everything that Rusty encounters is new to him. It is as if Dehra

was giving him daily lessons on how to live. His friends, particularly the Sikh Somi and the

Hindu Ranbir, embody this zest for life, and the instinctive warmth in Somi‟s offer of hospitality

has something novel. Somi even goes out his way to find Rusty a job as private tutor for the

Kapoors‟ son Kishen, and Rusty comes to stay in the roof of the Kapoors‟ house. He develops a

crush for Meena Kapoor, the young wife of the alcoholic Kapoor, and the peak of idyllic bliss

and joy in living comes during the family picnic, when he expresses his love to her and she,

needing someone to love her, reciprocates. However, life has its dark nights of the soul, and

Rusty gets his fair share of tragedy soon enough. Meena dies in a car accident; Rusty has forced

to learn the grim aspects of life:

Rusty had overcome by a feeling of impotence and futility, and of the

unimportance of life. Every moment, he told himself, every moment someone is
born and someone dies, you can count them one, two, three, a birth and death for
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every moment…what is this one life in the whole pattern of life, what is this one
death but a passing of time…. In addition, if I were to die now, suddenly and
without cause, what would happen, would it matter…we live without knowing
why or to what purpose. (P.88)

Kishen has to leave Dehra as soon as possible, to stay with his aunt. Meanwhile Rusty‟s other

friends have also departed-Ranbir and Suri to Musoorie and Somi is preparing to go to Amrister.

Rusty finds himself all alone once more, virtually as he was at the beginning of the novel.

Ultimately, he too decides to abandon Dehra, perhaps India as well, to get ssfar away from all

memories of Meena and her death. At Hardwar, he meets with another set of very new

occurrences, which confirm the unpredictable flux of life for the last time, confounding all his

elaborate plans. Kapoor has married again and is healthier than he ever was; the shock of the

second marriage has made Kishen disown his father and resort to the career of a notorious thief

for a living. Rusty traces Kishen and they decide to return to Dehra because:

They were both refugees-refugees from the world… They were each other‟s
shelter, each other‟s refuge, and each other‟s help. Kishen was a jungle, divorced
from the rest of humankind, and Rusty was the only one who understood him-
because Rusty too was divorced from humankind. In addition, theirs was a tie that
would hold, because they were the only people who know each other and loved
each other. (P.117)

Yet there is hope at the end of novel, the hope that was stated Somi‟s letter to Rusty,

I shall be coming back to Dehra in the spring, in time to watch you play Holi with
Ranbir…wait a little, be patient, and the bad days will pass. We do not know why
we live. It is no use trying to know. However, we have to live, Rusty, because we
really want to. In addition, as long as we want to, we have to find something to
live for, and even die for it. (P.102)

Moreover, the hope that is present in life itself:

“One day you‟ll be great, Rusty. A writer, an actor, a prime minister, or

something. May be a poet! Why not a poet, Rusty?”
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Rusty smiled. He knew he was smiling, because he was smiling at himself.

“Yes,” he said, “why not a poet?”
Therefore, they began to walk.
Ahead of them lay forest and silence…and what was left of time. (P.118)

The Room on the Roof is therefore a general allegory of life, but also a specific homage to Dehra

Dun. Apart from the last three chapters, the entire story unfolds in Dehra, and this imparts a

certain unity to the structure. The novel has written in an almost dramatic framework, it being

possible to sub- divide it into four „Acts‟. The expository first seven chapters introduce all

chapters (except the Kapoor ) and shift between Harrison‟s house and the Dehra bazaar. With

Rusty‟s happy advent into the Kapoor household, the next seven chapters describe the

extroverted gaiety of the bazaar and the Kapoor house, only the climactic picnic of chapter 12

being appropriately set in the Dehra forest. There follows the gloomy introspective period after

Meena‟s death, and the sequence of five chapters emphasizes the motif of The Room on the Roof

where Rusty is engrossed in his own thoughts. The rooftop room gains in importance until it

symbolizes the entire world of Dehra, as Rusty knows it. In the form of wages he is a given a

room on the roof.

The story develops in the form of an allegory, the allegory of room. Rusty enjoys this

newfound freedom in the company of Somi, Kishen and Suri. Mr.Kapoor in spite of his alcoholic

traits and occasional disgusting bouts is always ready to join their funs. The novel rounds up one

phase of life and thereafter begins the second one. The story that is produced personal and

general, that in the vast world, each individual struggles to find out his room, his niche. As

literature is a mirror of life. Ruskin Bond holds a true mirror to life. He presents a true picture of

life and does not transcend the readers to an imaginary world. In this respect, Bond can be

termed as a realist.
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REFERENCES

Bond, Ruskin. The Room on the Roof and Vagrants in the Valley. New Delhi: Penguin
Books, 1987. Print
---. Collected Fiction. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1996. Print
---. Treasury of Stories for Children. New Delhi: Puffin Books. Print
Aggarwal, Amita. The Fictional World of Ruskin Bond. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons Publication,
2005. P.85-86. Print
Melwani, Murli. Indian English Stories. New Delhi: Sampale Publication. Print.